Unofficial news and tips about Google

May 29, 2008

Gmail Labs?

Google pre-announced a mysterious new feature for Gmail. "On Thursday, June 5th we're going to be launching a new Gmail feature that we like to think of as a next evolution of 20% time. It's a change in our development process and in the way users will be able to influence Gmail's design."

20% time is one of the many peculiar things about Google. "The 20 percent time is a well-known part of our philosophy here, enabling engineers to spend one day a week working on projects that aren't necessarily in our job descriptions. You can use the time to develop something new, or if you see something that's broken, you can use the time to fix it."

Google's engineers may work on many side-projects related to Gmail and this could be an opportunity for users to try them, send feedback or influence which features should be further developed and added to Gmail. It's not clear if that's the right interpretation for Google's intentionally-ambiguous text, but we'll find out next Thursday.

It might even match one of my predictions for this year: "Gmail will launch a Google Labs-like site with experimental features that could be added by those who are curious to see the next features before they are officially launched." Instead of releasing entirely new applications on Google Labs, it's more practical for Google to create mini-labs for each important service and expose experimental features that could be added or removed, like in Google Experimental Search.

Update (June 5th): TechCrunch covers Google's announcements. "At 6 pm PDT Gmail will launch Gmail labs under a Gmail tab - all users will have access to it. The first batch will have 13 features." Here are the features:

I can't believe people still talk about that "20% time" bs as if it applies to every Googlers.

IT'S A MYTH. It only applies to less than probably 15-20% of Googleemployees. They first have to suggest ideas to their managers orlike and those ideas have to get approved in order for them toget the "20%". Majority at G don't get that freedom.

I really dislike Google making impression to people as if everyGoogler can get a free 20% every week just after they join Google.

by that phrase, I'm guessing something different... since gmail has an official greasemonkey API, maybe they will launch a site were "users" (actually developers) will be able to feature their greasemonkey scripts and other users might be able to choose them and plug into gmail.. like a directory of gmail mods..maybe they could also plug some sort of social voting like digg or reddit for users to vote for the best scripts..

just some sort of iGoogle, but for gmail, with a new, non-traditional twist...who knows if it isn't actually an iGoogle version with widgets focused for Gmail?

@Victor M.J.: They will not. You can create instant "folders" by using the search engine on the top of the page. If you want to see all the mail from e.g. John Doe, you type it in, enter, and the temporary folderlike compilation will instantly be listed. And you can compile according to any keywords, which is pretty useful. :)

I cannot understand the adversity to folders. When people say they want folders, I believe what they really want is sub-folders. Labels with sub-labels is a super set to folders. Nobody seems to have a problem with labels, so what is the big problem with sub-labels/folders? It has already been done in docs. Many are used to organize this way and does not cause any harm to those how are adverse to sub-folders/labels.

Hi...today I noticed that I no more have acess to the google labs in my gmail account. The google labs tab itself disappeared. Also gmail quit fetching emails from my hotmail account. Can somebody please help?Thanks